Encounter God through the Scriptures as you are guided by the wisdom and experience of the Blackaby family.
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Disclosure: Many thanks to Harper Collins Christian Publishing for providing a sample of the product for this review. Opinions are 100% my own and NOT influenced by monetary compensation.
Waaay back in the late 90s, one of my best friends and I worked our way through this workbook (several times!) and it was such a helpful tool that I worked through it with another close friend a few years later.
Because of that experience, I was really jazzed to take a look at this:
This Encountering God Study Bible is the crowning work of the Blackabys. It includes a wealth of helpful tools that will encourage you to see that you can encounter God in His Word—and that He wants to encounter you through it.
My black Leathersoft version has two ribbon markers which I already put to use when I dove right in to a new reading-through of this book that will continue to impact my life in such a great way.
Some of its many other features include:
- A presentation page to personalize this special gift or note when you began working through it for yourself
- Encounter notes that highlight how God might choose to encounter you in His Word
- Articles that highlight the creative nature of God and defend the lasting truths of the faith
- Rich explanatory notes explaining ideas, events, people, and places in the text to make the meaning clear
- Word studies that shed light on key terms and important meaning from the original Greek and Hebrew
- Character studies that give overviews of key men and women in the Bible
- Biographical sketches of church history figures that give examples of people who faithfully encountered and followed God in their life
- Book introductions that set the scene for each biblical book and its importance for encountering God
- A timeline of the biblical narrative for a better understanding of how historical and biblical events fit throughout history
- A harmony of the Gospels that details the life and ministry of Jesus in chronological order and shows where each event and teaching occurs
- A chart of the Old Testament prophecies fulfilled by Jesus as Messiah and where to find these in the New Testament
- Reading plans to guide you through the entire Bible in a year
- Center-column references to help you find related passages quickly and easily
- A NKJV concordance with an alphabetical listing of important passages by key words
- Words of Christ in red
- An index to easily find word studies, character studies, historical encounters, apologetic, and aesthetic articles
It will obviously take me a while to form a full opinion of this study Bible, but I immediately appreciate the fact that this seems like such a great foundational version to work through.
I'm excited to see how the notes shared throughout match up with things I remember learning from when I worked through Experiencing God.
(In fact, I'd been thinking about working through that book again, so the arrival of this Bible might have inspired me to do just that!)
If your current Bible has gotten ratty (you know it happens!), then consider this one as a replacement.
If you've been on the hunt for a good study Bible to take your reading even further, then I feel like this would make a wonderful choice. My experience with the earlier Blackaby work makes me feel this will be a positive addition to my reference collection, which was solidified as soon as I read the "about" page and these two points:
"The Bible is not about our view of God, it's about His view of us."
and
"...what most people miss. We do not encounter God. He encounters us. And He initiates encounters with us, not in order to give us warm devotional thoughts, but to forever change our lives. As He reveals His will to us, we are compelled to adjust our lives to His activity and join Him in His work."
It's not about us; it's about Him, and the better we understand that, the better our encounters with Him will be.
Order your copy of the Encountering God Study Bible today!
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Have you ever experienced a Bible study tool that you return to again and again? I'd love to hear! Either leave a comment below or email me at lisahealy (at) outlook (dot) com.
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